


A Laugh Like Wild Horses Running

by Trapelo_Road475



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Arizona Coyotes, I just want this to be as happy as possible ok, M/M, Other, celebrating 400, reference to hypothetical future gangbang if you squint, so much lovin', tyson and shane are an old married couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9036284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trapelo_Road475/pseuds/Trapelo_Road475
Summary: Shane Doan scores his 400th goal, and it's hard to tell who's happiest for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluelinerush27](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluelinerush27/gifts).



Every five seconds or so, one of the boys pounces him. A quick arm across the chest, a hand on the shoulder, giddy whispers, you got it, you did it. Rambunctious boys, busting out of their skin, rampant sons like dogs and horses. Every couple of heartbeats, another one elbowing into him, god we're so proud of you. They won't stop talking, they won't stop grinning. Like they want to do all his smiling for him. 

It's not that he's not happy. It's only a goal. He's not sure why they're making such a fuss. Why they always make such a fuss. 

But they are boys, he supposes. The most of them, anyhow. Always making a fuss about some thing or another. The chatter's been about the party for Chychlet this weekend, at least up until tonight, and now it's all about him, and his stomach turns upside down every time fingers catch him light on the back of the neck, or someone gets him in a lumpy, sweaty hug.

God, they screamed for a solid ten minutes, and none so loud as the voices on the bench with him. He couldn't see Andrea and the kids and his mum and dad up in the box, through the shining, spinning jumbotron lights and a thousand flashes on cameras and mobile phones. They didn't even yell so loud for his first hattrick, he thinks. Not even for his very first goal, which he remembers like the moment the puck was slapped cold into his startled palm, Teemu with his smile as wide as a thunderhead rushing down the prairie, Teemu saying there you go, Shane, there you go, you do good work now. His first goal: his fingers on the black cold rubber, feeling the edges, het up and alive, and rowdy and pink-cheeked as his boys now, his boys who in the thick of the media pretend to whisper in his ear and kiss his cheek with their shy lips.

They smirk and giggle, as the media could never catch them. He'd turn to them, he'd give them an eye or a knuckle to the chest, be stern like he ought, but he can't find it in them. Every face whose gaze he catches flashes him a grin. A thumbs up. That's our Shane, that's our captain. This is one of those nights he doesn't feel half so old. He feels fifteen again, but brighter-hearted, perhaps. He feels fifteen but fifteen lifting his eyes in the back pew at church, that feeling like your ribs had took wing, like you were all in pieces, like God had you in his hand and looked upon you kindly so. 

The media is drifting out. Duke is chatting seriously with Max, a thing he wouldn't ordinarily like - a serious look on either face is a harbinger of mischief from the lot. Connor looks like someone has stretched him out like an action figure, like a bird, perched, like a guitar string singing out in stillness. Chychlet cannot sit still will not sit still moves from stall to stall, settles, gets up. Tobi and Jordy are boxing it up in towels, making the rest of them laugh.

Shane loves them all. God he loves them, heart at rest still racing, he loves them like wild horses, like the desert, like the wide flat horizon soothing to the eye, like the face of God is bestowed upon him, even when they roust him out with their arguments, like so help me boys, I was trying to sleep, what now? But he cannot argue. They come to him so trusting. Like Smitty and Chychlet. The boys thinking it was gonna be a joke but Shane's got all the stuff, the drinks and snacks and everything, ordered and set up at the ranch 'cause it's all fun and games, like Tyson says, til someone loses an eye (or conks out from dehydration, isn't that a trip) - "Then it's fun you can't see," Ty would say.

The boys all get quiet of a sudden and he looks straight up because that cannot be a good thing. 

It's only Ty. That sweet gold feeling settles in his belly. Fifteen, shy as houses. Ty with his hair mussed and his tie sticking out of his pocket in a jumble, Tyson who has never met a mirror he did not like. Tyson almost shy, and Shane remembers, end of the season, lying in a hammock in Kamloops, tangled in eight hundred ways, and Tyson asking him, softly with the bitten lip, how 'bout you come to visit me in Edmonton this summer?

It's the face of Edmonton in summer, pausing in the dressing room. It's all the still-tongued boys. They know, it's no secret to them. They know. Shane does not know exactly how they know, but he suspects some certain loudmouthed voices. 

"Well, I called it, you know," Tyson says, to no one in particular, and then looks him dead in the eye and there he is: sixteen. Tyson pouncing him, corralling him in a headlock and twenty dumb kids are half ready to defend his forty-year-old-sweat-and-horse-hided-honor, Tyson grinds his skull with a noogie: sixteen. "Didn't I call it, rook! Didn't I? You finally did it, moose, you finally did it!" 

Boys. Boys at once, two boys, two boys on the carpet in the basement of a billet house, one whispering to the other in the lips, finally, finally. 

How long's he loved Ty? Not quite as long as he's loved God, but it's close. Not that he'd tell Tyson that.

He's laughing it's all rushing up inside him like water and stones, laughing, struggling to get out of Tyson's arm, cut it out, cut it out, the boys are watching, somebody's got to be an adult here.

"Shane?"

Duke, looking sensible. Duke, looking shy. Casting a glance at the rest of the lot. Louis looks suspiciously like he might be hugging himself, nipping on a smile. Shane likes that - it's a far look from how Louis got to them, a far look from the thin shy creature who'd had so many stripes taken off him he might have had none left to give. 

"Shane, we were talking - "

Mumbling from the group.

" - we were talking, and we decided - "

Louder grumbling, moaning, groaning, Duke, come on, Duke.

"I said, we _decided_ , cause _we were talking_ and _we're not total assholes_ , that we oughta just - leave you and Tyson alone."

"Oh."

Tyson still has his arm flung over his shoulders. Their ribs touch when they breathe. 

"'Cause you're friends, and all that."

Tobi hoots. "Friends!"

Connor chortles - "With benefits?"

"Was I _was I not just saying_ we are not total assholes, _gentlemen._ "

Shane can't help the smile. "Are you saying I ordered sixteen cases of Gatorade and condoms for nothing, Duke?"

"Oh, shit, no, man. We're just leaving you alone for tonight. Virgin sacrifice is on at the ranch this weekend."

"Kids," Tyson huffs softly, and mainly in his ear. 

"Merry Christmas, Papa 'Yote!" That's Laws, singing out.

"And Happy Goalidays!" Max, too. 

A group of boys laughing like wild horses running. Tyson's heart almost in his own ribs, just like back when he was sixteen. Duke's steady, proud, pleased smile. 

He might never have been tough enough to be a cowboy, but this, he thinks, is just fine.


End file.
